UCLA Scientists Turn to OnlyFans and Solana Meme Coins to Fund 62-Year Wildlife Study

Faced with a severe squeeze in traditional federal research funding, scientists leading one of the world’s longest-running wildlife studies have turned to subscription platform OnlyFans and Solana cryptocurrency meme coins to keep their field operations afloat.

Researchers from UCLA launched an account titled “OnlyMarms” to generate income for a 62-year-old field study tracking yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado. The project, established in 1962, requires between $75,000 and $100,000 annually to support graduate student researchers and maintain continuous seasonal monitoring—funding historically provided by federal grants.

The idea emerged as traditional funding dwindled, prompting UCLA professor Daniel Blumstein and his team to search for alternative revenue sources. A graduate student dubbed the account “OnlyMarms,” promising subscribers “uncensored marmot content.” To date, the account has generated about $4,000.

“Maybe this is a different audience than, you know, most of our science communication reaches,” Blumstein said. “That’s great. Turns out, it’s even bigger than this.”

The fundraising campaign unexpectedly spilled into the crypto market after third-party creators launched more than 10 OnlyMarms-inspired meme coins on Pump.fun, a token launchpad on the Solana blockchain. While Blumstein confirmed the research team did not create the tokens, crypto users reached out to instruct the researchers on how to claim accumulated transaction fees from the trading volume.

“People have independently created a meme coin and told us to grab the transaction—to register it, and then we get the transaction fees. And that is blowing up,” Blumstein said. “Apparently, this is a meme coin for good that people like.”

The intersection of viral animals and digital assets has established strong precedents in the crypto market. In 2024, the Solana-based token Moo Deng, inspired by a viral pygmy hippo, launched on Pump.fun and rapidly escalated to a market capitalization of approximately $680 million before securing listings on major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase.

Alongside their digital outreach, the UCLA researchers partnered with a Colorado brewery to craft a “Marmot Tears” IPA and inaugurated a public “Fat Marmot Week” competition to broaden community support.

Blumstein pointed to the unconventional effort as a direct symptom of declining institutional support for fundamental science in the United States.

“No. It’s appalling,” Blumstein said. “What we’re doing is destroying the scientific structure and the university-federal partnerships that made us great, made us rich, made us the scientific leaders of the world. It’s being taken apart, and that’s really sad.”